Clifton R. Wharton Sr.

Clifton Reginald Wharton Sr. was born on the eleventh of May 1899 in Baltimore, Maryland, and was raised in Boston, Massachusetts. He read law at Boston University, earning his degree in 1920 and an advanced law degree in 1923, and practiced in Boston before turning toward the service of his nation abroad.

In 1925, following the Rogers Act that reformed the diplomatic corps, Wharton became the first African American to enter the United States Foreign Service as a career officer, admitted by examination rather than by patronage. Over the decades he served with distinction in posts across the Atlantic world, including Liberia, the Canary Islands, Madagascar, the Azores, and Portugal, rising in 1953 to consul general at Marseilles, France.

In 1958 President Eisenhower named him chief of the U.S. mission to Romania, making him the first African American to head an American diplomatic mission in Europe. Then in 1961 President Kennedy appointed him Ambassador to Norway, where he became the first African American to reach the rank of Ambassador by ascending through the career ranks of the Foreign Service rather than by political appointment. He held that post until his retirement in 1964.

He died on the twenty-fifth of April 1990 in Phoenix, Arizona, having quietly opened a door through which generations of American diplomats would follow. May the dignity of his long service be remembered and honored.